Gov. John Kitzhaber, Oregon education leaders push for more college graduates by 2025

View full sizePortland State University students pack into a History of Rock music class. PSU has had the highest enrollment out of the seven schools in Oregon University System for the past few years, with 28,522 students in fall 2010.

CORVALLIS -- Oregon has staked its education and economic future on a goal called 40-40-20, and top education leaders gathered in Corvallis this week to consider how they are going to reach it.

The goal declares that by 2025, Oregon will ensure that:

40 percent of adults will have earned a bachelor's degree or higher.

40 percent of adults will have earned an associate degree or post-secondary credential.

20 percent of adults will have earned a high school diploma, modified high school diploma or the equivalent of a high school diploma.

The new Oregon Education Investment Board, chaired by Gov. John Kitzhaber, will oversee all school spending in public schools and universities to help foster a seamless system extending from preschool through graduate school.

"There is no other state in the United States that is imagining something of the scope and audacity that 40-40-20 proposes," Curtis Johnson, president of the Citistates Group, a network of civic leaders focused on building competitive cities, told the Corvallis summit. "There is no other place that proposes to support proficiency in place of age, grade and seat time."

Economists say the payoff for coming anywhere near the 40-40-20 goal is that Oregon would see financial gains along with declines in poverty and all the social problems that come with it.

Places with high proportions of educated people see more local innovation and attract sophisticated, high-paying industries that need smart workers. They also tend to be healthier with less crime and unemployment.

Benton County, for example, has Oregon's highest educated adult population, with 59 percent holding an associate degree or higher. It also has the state's healthiest population and lowest unemployment rate at 6.6 percent. Corvallis, with Oregon State University, is the county seat.

Another set of numbers compiled recently by the Lumina Foundation shows what education reformers are up against:

Nine percent of Oregon adults ages 25 to 64 have an associate degree

Thirty percent of adults have a bachelor's degree or higher

Ten percent of adults have not completed high school.

To boost those numbers to 40-40-20, Oregon would have to send about 650,000 people -- nearly a third of the adult working-age population -- back to school. About 27 percent of adults, however, have some college, so they might not need much more schooling or may already qualify for a certificate or degree.

In addition, to reach the goal, schools and colleges must dramatically increase student success and completion rates. They would have to wipe out high school dropouts and send 80 percent of high school graduates on to community colleges and universities, where all would have to succeed.

But to achieve those rates, Oregon schools must contend with their current rates:

Two in three high school students graduate on time. One in four drops out.

One in five Oregon full-time community college students earns a two-year degree after four years; 8 percent of part-time students do so.

Two-thirds of full-time students in Oregon's seven public universities earn a bachelor's degree within eight years; only 29 percent of part-time students do so.

Oregon leaders in Corvallis agreed that to increase high school and college completion rates, they are going to have to find ways to succeed with students who have traditionally been underrepresented at the finish line -- poor, minority and rural students, and those whose parents did not complete college.

They are students like Tiffany Dollar, who grew up in Portland with a mother addicted to drugs. She attended 13 different schools, four in third grade alone, and often slept on couches of other people's living rooms, she said. But a couple of key teachers recognized she was bright and helped her find a path to Portland State University, where she's studying to become a history teacher.

"I love this state and want to contribute to my state," she said.

The state's education reform plan calls for spending more money on places and practices that help the state reach its goals. The investment board wants to foster an education system that focuses on proficiency, which would make it easier for students to learn and advance at their own paces.

It also would put a premium on prevention. The investment board, for example, wants to expand early childhood education. Spending more early in the education pipeline could prevent the achievement gap between disadvantaged and middle class children from ever emerging and reduce remediation costs later.

Kitzhaber said the investment board wants to make achievement compacts next year with districts and universities that will define the outcomes the state wants for the money it invests in them.

He calls the 40-40-20 goal "our North Star, the compass setting that will guide us."

One more fact adds a little urgency to the quest for 40-40-20: The high school Class of 2025 enters kindergarten next fall.